Managing overhead costs, including procuring and tracking purchases of goods and services, remains a difficult, time-consuming and expensive challenge. As the number and types of goods and services consumed by the business enterprise increases, the amount of time and effort required for procurement of these resources increases. Automated systems for procuring items are available, however, these conventional purchase request systems have typically been the domain exclusively of large enterprises. These systems often do not meet the needs of the average small business or limit their entry by being cost-prohibitive. They are designed for large purchases that often have complicated approval processes involving many different parties. These systems are complex to deploy and are expensive to operate and maintain, often requiring dedicated hardware and software investments and extensive programming rules. They are often available only as part of a larger enterprise-wide system such as those offered by SAP or Oracle. Further, these conventional systems often do not account for Web-based purchasing of every day items such as office supplies, technology equipment, and Web services.
Small businesses need an inexpensive and efficient purchase request system that enables them to quickly approve or decline purchases and automatically approve routine purchase requests. The systems and methods of the present invention serve this market very well and overcome previous limitations of conventional purchase request systems.
For example, conventional purchase request systems require intervention by multiple parties at multiple points in the purchase process. As an example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,763,335 (the '335 patent) discloses a purchase request apparatus and system in a client server environment where a requester specifies an article for purchase and an approver determines approval or rejection of the purchase request. However, this type of system has many limitations. For example, it is designed only for physical articles, and does not account for the purchase of services or other non-tangible goods. More importantly, there is no provision to efficiently process requests for recurring services based, not on a fixed price, but rather on a monthly fee. These types of existing purchase request systems do not adequately address recurring purchases where there is no set dollar amount, but rather a recurring charge that occurs on a periodic basis. Additionally, purchase request systems such as those described by the '335 patent do not permit a user to set a hierarchical structure of the organization or group to allow other parties such as managers or supervisors to specify pre-approved purchase limits for users based on a dollars per purchase or dollars per month basis. These inflexible systems force managers to manually approve each purchase request and do not work well with sales organizations, senior managers, and other parties that typically have pre-approved budgets, expense accounts, or other standing purchase limits.
Thus, there is a need for a system that can automatically determine if a user has the proper authority to purchase a particular good or service without requiring excessive manual intervention. Also, there is a need for a purchase request system that will selectively route purchase requests to users with appropriate authorization levels with which the goods or services may be procured without additional levels of review. Moreover, there is a need for a purchase request system that facilitates timely and efficient tracking and accounting of the ordered resources.
Additionally, traditional purchase request systems require users to comply with standard data formats, often filling out long and arduous paper or electronic forms. They then require the person approving the purchase to independently look through catalogs or Web sites to review the product. There is a need for a purchase request system that is Web-based and has the flexibility to account for purchasing from any vendor, not merely an approved list of vendors. Further, there is a need for a system that is capable of queuing a transaction so the good or service may be later purchased easily by storing shopping cart or other order data where it is stored on a vendor's website. This eliminates the need for a configurable product such as a computer or website hosting to be re-configured by a manager approving the purchase request, thus saving time and reducing data entry errors. Such a method would also enable the user to simply drag and drop electronic product data into the purchase request, thereby eliminating data entry.